Azerbaijan currently has diplomatic relations with 160 countries: Afghanistan, Bahrain, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, the People's Republic of China, Denmark, Egypt, France, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, Greece, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Kuwait, Libya, Luxembourg, Mexico, Moldova, Mongolia, Netherlands, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Poland, Qatar, Republic of India, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Tajikistan, Togo, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.

Due to the low level of investment in cross-border railway projects, the city has preserved a slot within the Thalys high-speed train network which uses existing tracks on its last 70 km from Belgium to Cologne.

) Hilton also claims a Roman Catholic monarch would therefore be unable to be crowned by the Archbishop of Canterbury and points to the examples of European states that have similar religious provisions for their monarchs: Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, whose constitutions compel their monarchs to be Lutherans, the Netherlands, the constitution of which insists its monarchs be members of the Protestant House of Orange, and Belgium, which has a constitution that provides for the succession to be through Roman Catholic houses.

Postal service in Belgium is in many cases performed by Belgian Post Group, a semi-privat public company which has as a monopoly on letters until 50g weight.

Belgium has numerous copper cable internet providers:

Belgium has three major fiberglas cable internet providers:

For international communications, Belgium has 5 submarine cables and a number of satellite earth stations, two of which are Intelsat, and one Eutelsat.

In 2009 Belgium has 20 major media companies active in numerous telecommunications media subsectors.

Belgium has also 1 heliport.

Non-ferrous metallurgy has prospered because the Pirdop copper smelting plant was bought by Union Minière of Belgium and because export markets have been favourable.

Fort Dodge Animal Health has their vaccines available for multiple European Countries ( vaccination will start in 2008 in Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Spain and Italy ).

At one point, almost every major city in the US had a velodrome or two for track racing events, however since the middle of the 20th century cycling has become a minority sport in the US whilst in Continental Europe it continues to be a major sport, particularly in the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Italy and Spain.

This optional protocol has been ratified by all EU states except five ( namely Belgium, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, and United Kingdom ).

Parliament has two meeting places, namely the Louise Weiss building in Strasbourg, France, which serves for twelve four-day plenary sessions per year and is the official seat, and the Espace Léopold () complex in Brussels, Belgium, the larger of the two, which serves for committee meetings, political groups and complementary plenary sessions.

In the Netherlands and Belgium, where euthanasia has been legalized, it still remains homicide although it is not prosecuted and not punishable if the perpetrator ( the doctor ) meets certain legal exceptions.

In the late 20th century, Belgium became a federal state in which the Dutch-speaking part was given autonomy as the Flemish Community () and the Flemish Region (); these two entities were effectively merged, and Flanders now refers to the territory of the Flemish Community, which additionally has partial jurisdiction over Brussels.

In the second half of the twentieth century, however, there has been a gradual shift of political and economic power to Flanders, which, having modernized its economy, is now more wealthy and prosperous than its southern counterpart .< ref >" Belgium.

It has over 6 million inhabitants, or about 60 % of the population of Belgium.

Belgian journalist Jo Gérard has claimed that a family manuscript dated 1781 recounts that potatoes were deep-fried prior to 1680 in what was then the Spanish Netherlands and is now present-day Belgium, in the Meuse valley: " The inhabitants of Namur, Andenne, and Dinant, had the custom of fishing in the Meuse for small fish and frying, especially among the poor, but when the river was frozen and fishing became hazardous, they cut potatoes in the form of small fish and put them in a fryer like those here ".

The metropolitan area, including the outer commuter zone, covers an area of and has a total population of 594, 582 as of 1 January 2008, which ranks it as the fourth most populous in Belgium.

As one of the largest cities in Belgium, Ghent has a highly developed transportation system.

On 3 July 2005, the country became the first country in the world to give full marriage and adoption rights to homosexual couples ( Belgium has allowed same-sex marriage since 2003 and co-parenting since April 2006, and the Netherlands has allowed same-sex marriage since 2001 and now has a law in preparation to provide full adoption rights in equal conditions to opposite-sex marriages ).

Hergé is a prominent national hero in his native country, to the extent where he has been described as the actual " personification of Belgium ".

Describing Flanders as the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium is commonplace, although Jewish groups have been speaking Yiddish in Antwerp for centuries, and Flanders ' minority residents include 170 nationalities — their larger groups speaking French, Berber, Turkish, Arabic, Spanish, Italian and Polish.

Some speculate that the dish may have been invented in Spain, the first European country in which the potato appeared via the New World colonies, and assumes the first appearance to have been as an accompaniment to fish dishes in Galicia, from which it spread to the rest of the country and further to the Spanish Netherlands, which became Belgium more than a century later.

The German invasion of Belgium was not important because the British decision had already been made and the British were more concerned with the fate of France ( pp. 457 – 62 ).

It has been pointed out that the Netherlands, which had a Calvinist majority, industrialised much later in the 19th century than predominantly Catholic Belgium, which was one of the centres of the Industrial Revolution on the European mainland.

Escher, who had been very fond of and inspired by the landscapes in Italy, was decidedly unhappy in Switzerland, and in 1937, the family moved again, to Uccle, a suburb of Brussels, Belgium.

The treaty has been ratified by 27 parties — Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Chile, the People's Republic of China, Ecuador, Finland, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Poland, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States, and Uruguay

Soap operas have been very popular in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium.

Diplomatic relations have been severed with several countries including: Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Germany, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, United States, Belgium, Spain, and the Gulf States.

Tintin's legacy includes the establishment of a market for comic strip collections ; the serialisation followed by collection model has been adopted by creators and publishers in France and Belgium.

The civilian governments of most countries in the game have been shattered ( France and Belgium quit NATO and thus largely escaped war damage ,) with the US government splitting into the civilian and military governments, as has the military chain of command, supply lines, etc.

EPP leader Wilfried Martens, former prime minister of Belgium, stated " Cameron's campaign has been to take his party back to the centre in every policy area with one major exception: Europe.

He has been awarded honorary doctorates at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1989 and at the Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium in 2005.

I can answer the question without hesitation, bearing in mind the fact he had, as will easily be believed, the strongest possible feeling about the sanctity of treaties and international engagements, and the moral obligation to observe them ... from the moment when the Germans violated the neutrality of Belgium, he would ... have been for immediate war ".

An IGISOL has also been combined with a laser ion source at the Leuven Isotope Separator On Line ( LISOL ) in Belgium.

So-called Limburg pottery and La Hoguette pottery are styles which stretch into northwestern France and the Netherlands, but it has sometimes been argued that these technologies are the result of pottery technology spreading beyond the original LBK farming population of eastern Belgium and northeastern France, and being made by hunter gatherers.

The Netherlands retained the former two while French Flanders, which had been annexed at the time of Louis XIV remained in French possession, and Eupen remained within the German Confederation, although it would pass to Belgium after World War I as compensation for the war.

By 1830 when iron and later steel became important the Belgium coal industry had long been established, and used steam-engines for pumping.

Friction between French-speaking ( Walloons ) and Dutch ( Flemish ) speaking Flemings has always been the central political issue of the Kingdom of Belgium.

Since 2000 there has been only one centre in Belgium performing psychosurgery, carrying out about 8 or 9 operations a year ( some capsulotomies and some DBS ), mostly for OCD.